Vehicle manufacturers are seeking to provide their vehicles with systems for protecting pedestrians. For example, air bags are already known that are designed to deploy outwards from the vehicle in order to cover zones that are too rigid, such as the junction between the hood and the windshield, in order to damp a possible impact against a pedestrian.
Amongst the zones which are rigid and therefore dangerous for pedestrians, there is also the junction between the hood and a fender which is relatively stiff because of the juxtaposed edges of the hood and of the fender.
In order to protect this fender/hood zone, the state of the art, and in particular DE 19948181, discloses devices which deploy all along the join to be covered, in the event of an impact being detected.
The problem of such devices protecting the junction between the hood and the fender consists in that they deploy on a very restricted and locatd surface.
Also known in the state of the art, in particular from DE 10014832, is a device which consists in causing the hood to be raised by deploying an air bag. Nevertheless, during an impact, since the air bag deploys mainly under the hood, the pedestrian's head strikes the outside surface of the hood, which surface is rigid, and that can be dangerous even when an air bag is deployed underneath it.